I am trying to argue that, because that is the case. You think the definition of "continent" has been updated. it hasn't. Europe is a continent. The British isles are islands close to the continent. They are on the same plate, but why does that make the one a part of the other? You are like someone claiming that that the everyday concept of "solid object" is obsolete since the discovery of atomic theory.
Sorry Ishmael but you are completely and utterly wrong. The UK is part of the European continent and has been for millions of years. The slight accident of sealevel change which has the British Isles separated by the Channel is a momentary feature in geological terms which will correct itself as and when the next Ice age wanders along. It is a geological definition which no amount of your idiotic arguing can change.
Certainly we can blame Labour for ignoring the warnings (from Vince Cable among others) about the impending crisis, for going easy on the financial sector, and having the hubris to announce that it had "abolished boom and bust" in the middle of a massive credit boom. We can blame the Tories for putting too much emphasis on spending cuts and not enough on capital investment or raising money through fairer taxation. And for their policy of going even easier on big finance. And both parties are to blame for the QE programme, which turned out to be the slow acting poison that fuels much of the current day discontent.
But the reality is that most of the political decisions on the economy since 2008 (QE possibly excepted) have been around the margins of unavoidable events. It would have been better if we had never become so reliant on debt, public and private, over the decades prior. But no politician was advocating that - both our economy and our political system is set up to encourage precisely the opposite.
Most politics is definitely fiddling around the edges to give the material for journalists to over-inflate. I tend to agree except for the 'abolished boom and bust' comment, repeating a barney I had on here with someone the other day (i.e., everybody knew at the time that when 'boom and bust' meant the 'political business cycle' of chancellors fiddling about with interest rates to boost growth in the run up to an election - quite a different beast from the pre-2008 credit boom).
There was a really great essay by some 1970s Marxist on the increase in state spending, seeing it as a way of socialising the costs of reproducing capital... (snip).
You are being way too charitable to Brown. The 'boom and bust' line was trotted out over and over, to all sorts of audiences, and the clear message was that Labour's stable and prudent policies would avoid the harsh economic swings of the past. He talked about continuous growth, ongoing stability, financial discipline, All this said whilst an inexorably rising spiral of credit was taking us toward the 2008 cliff edge, which Brown denied when challenged about this very possibility in advance of the event.
When challenged about this in 2008 Brown tried to claim he had always said "no more Tory boom and bust" (as if voters cared whose), but the record confirms he used this formulation sometimes but very often not.
Theresa May should turn a huge problem into an opportunity, and do a major reshuffle. Boris, Patel, Green, Leadsom and McLoughlin out, maybe a couple more. That would free up some very useful space for promotions, and now is a time when the potential troublemakers are weak.
What has she got to lose?
Exactly what I said. Get in a combination of Brexiters and non, so everyone's happy.
I am trying to argue that, because that is the case. You think the definition of "continent" has been updated. it hasn't. Europe is a continent. The British isles are islands close to the continent. They are on the same plate, but why does that make the one a part of the other? You are like someone claiming that that the everyday concept of "solid object" is obsolete since the discovery of atomic theory.
Is Staten Ireland part of North America in your book?
turned out to be the slow acting poison that fuels much of the current day discontent.
.
Most politics is definitely fiddling around the edges to give the material for journalists to over-inflate...
There was a really great essay by some 1970s Marxist on the increase in state spending, seeing it as a way of socialising the costs of reproducing capital... (snip).
You are being way too charitable to Brown. The 'boom and bust' line was trotted out over and over, to all sorts of audiences, and the clear message was that Labour's stable and prudent policies would avoid the harsh economic swings of the past. He talked about continuous growth, ongoing stability, financial discipline, All this said whilst an inexorably rising spiral of credit was taking us toward the 2008 cliff edge, which Brown denied when challenged about this very possibility in advance of the event.
When challenged about this in 2008 Brown tried to claim he had always said "no more Tory boom and bust" (as if voters cared whose), but the record confirms he used this formulation sometimes but very often not.
This was the argument I had the other day. The problem is that all kinds of sources from before 2008 took Brown to mean that specific political practice, whether prefixed with 'Tory' or not. For instance, the definition given in a British Political Dictionary from 2004:
'Boom and bust. A phrase used to describe the tendency of the British economy to experience a cycle of rapid inflationary growth, often triggered by governments in advance of an election (for example Nigel Lawson's 1986 budget), followed by a recession, after interest rates have been increased to bring inflation under control, as occurred under the chancellorship of Norman Lamont in the early 1990s. Gordon Brown, New Labour's first chancellor, claimed he was breaking out of this tendency by letting the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England set interest rates on purely economic criteria. ... See also: political business cycle.'
This was how John Smith had used the term as shadow chancellor. Everybody at the time understood what Brown was talking about when he said 'boom and bust', it's only afterwards it's been reimagined to mean *any* boom and *any* recession.
The Tories have increased the national debt by 50% - a huge amount of cash borrowed with no assets to show. The Labour plan was borrow money to buy assets, an entirely different proposition..
Ho ho ho. So the Labour plan was to cut welfare payments, pensions, education and the NHS faster than Osborne, but to borrow more for infrastructure?
The Labour plan was to alter the mix of cuts and tax increases, weighting it slightly more towards the latter, arguing that the impact on growth would be less harmful. The IMF has belatedly come to the same position...
Nonsense. The Labour 'plan', if that's not too strong a word, was to say that the deficit could be cut with no pain to anyone. We never did find out what if anything they actually proposed to do, but they seemed to oppose every single spending cut Osborne implemented, even the most obvious and painless.
On the contrary, Labour was constantly going on about cuts and expected pain (reaction against it here: https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2010/06/cuts-deficit-labour-budget-obr). It's no surprise that they never drew up more concrete plans in opposition, that's just how our politics works unfortunately - we had equally little substance from the Tories before 2010, and then the plans and forecasts we did get turned out to be completely unreal.
Comments
When challenged about this in 2008 Brown tried to claim he had always said "no more Tory boom and bust" (as if voters cared whose), but the record confirms he used this formulation sometimes but very often not.
'Boom and bust.
A phrase used to describe the tendency of the British economy to experience a cycle of rapid inflationary growth, often triggered by governments in advance of an election (for example Nigel Lawson's 1986 budget), followed by a recession, after interest rates have been increased to bring inflation under control, as occurred under the chancellorship of Norman Lamont in the early 1990s. Gordon Brown, New Labour's first chancellor, claimed he was breaking out of this tendency by letting the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England set interest rates on purely economic criteria. ... See also: political business cycle.'
This was how John Smith had used the term as shadow chancellor. Everybody at the time understood what Brown was talking about when he said 'boom and bust', it's only afterwards it's been reimagined to mean *any* boom and *any* recession.